Measure of a Man Other Alternate Ending
by StoriesAreMagic
Summary: Everything worked out for the ninja against Azizi, or at least partially okay. Or did it? (This other alternate ending to my story "Measure of a Man" explores another way things could've worked out quite differently for the ninja. Warning for lots of angst and semi-intense stuff inside!)
1. One day I'll leave you

**AN: This is the third and final ending/second alternate ending to my story "Measure of a Man." It's the hurt-and-comfort-heavy ending with a side of, uh, really awful medical experimentation? Yeah, a big ol' heaping of that. Like, I almost upped the rating on this. If you haven't read "Measure of a Man" or don't want to read about concentrated hurt and comfort, you probably don't want to read this, but it's up to you. Also, it's a multi-part ending, almost as long as the original "Measure of a Man" fic itself, so don't be off-put by the abruptness of the end of this chapter, there's more to come. This chapter's title is from "Welcome to the Black Parade" by My Chemical Romance, which I don't own. Enjoy!**

* * *

"Azizi Julien!" Judge Manthus declared.

The room exploded with shouts of desperation and self-satisfaction.

"I've won! I've won!" Azizi yelled, hopping up out of her chair. The line of people sitting behind her stood up and crowded around her, offering their congratulations.

"No!" Lloyd protested at the same time. "This isn't right, it isn't right!"

"You're wrong!" Jay said outright.

"You can't!" Nya said at the top of her lungs simultaneously.

"I'm not finished!" Judge Manthus said loudly over the chaos.

The room quieted for the most part.

For a moment, the ninja team dared to hope. Could their impression be wrong? Could the judge's words be twisted? Could things turn around so late in the trial?

"The court finds in favor of Azizi Julien. Zane Julien is not human, and as such it is not a person in the eyes of the law and has none of the rights and claims that go along with the title of person. It cannot be allowed to continue to operate on its own. To follow inheritance laws, it will be placed under the ownership of Azizi Julien and will obey her commands for as long as it functions. This will include being studied by her team in whatever ways they decide are best, up to and including being dismantled. The ninja will relinquish the nindroid immediately and any of its belongings within one week. This concludes the court's decision," Judge Manthus explained. Unceremoniously, he stepped down from the bench and exited the room.

The ninja team sat in shocked silence. "No" was apparently the answer to all three of their hopeful questions.

Azizi strutted over to the defense side of the courtroom and, tailed by her three witnesses, stopped right in front of Zane, who was frozen in his seat. She looked him up and down, an aggressively predatory smile on her face. "Well? What are you waiting for? Come on, robot, we've got places to be and experiments to do."

Kai jumped up out of his chair, protesting, "Zane isn't going anywhere with you!"

"Not if we can help it," Jay vowed, standing up protectively.

Azizi smiled wider. "Oh, but you can't help it. Your nindroid is mine, and there's nothing you can do about it."

"We can fight you," Cole said casually, rising to his feet.

"I hope you're ready to face the full force of the ninja," Lloyd promised, getting up and into a fighting stance.

"And the samurai," Nya said sweetly, jumping up.

"No."

Surprisingly, the "no" did not come from Azizi deciding that she didn't want to tangle with the ninja team.

Instead, it came from Zane.

"No," Zane said again, shaking his head as he stood. "It is not worth it. I am not worth it."

"You are too worth it," Nya said firmly. "What, do you think we researched for and worked toward this trial for the fun of it? We're here for you."

"Right now, you need to be there for Ninjago. What do you think will happen if you disobey Judge Manthus and attack Azizi for doing what she is now entitled to do?" Zane asked.

"We'll all get arrested or something," Lloyd realized, but he continued holding his fighting stance anyway.

"Exactly. And then what will happen if another evil rises? Or what will become of Sensei's plan to create an academy for the betterment of Ninjago's children's futures? And what will become of each of you?" Zane pointed out. Slowly, he walked around the defense desk to come to a stop beside Azizi. "You should not stop this, no matter how much I wish you would."

"And you can't stop it either," Azizi said smugly. "I'll admit you have a good chance of making it out of the room and even out of the courthouse with my property, but the police will be on your trail immediately, and sooner rather than later the nindroid will be in my possession with the unfortunate side effect of all of you being in jail. I must say, you have been worthy adversaries, but it's time to quit."

"A ninja never quits," Kai told her, the hatred on his face bleeding thickly into his tone.

"So do not quit, but find other ways to do this," Zane urged them. "Please. Do not risk yourselves for me. There is nothing you can do right now."

"Nothing you can do. Sounds about right to me," Azizi simpered, placing a hand heavily on Zane's shoulder.

Zane flinched, but he didn't twist away. Instead, he bowed his head and let her be.

"We won't give up on you," Lloyd told Zane, his voice cracking slightly on the word "you." "I promise."

"Thank you, brother," Zane said simply before turning to Azizi. "I am ready."

"Good," Azizi drawled, and she removed her hand from his shoulder and began walking away toward where her allies were gathering by the door, calling back, "Come on, nindroid! Onward!"

Zane gave his friends and family one last long look. Then he turned and walked away, following Azizi without looking back.

"Should I even call you 'nindroid?'" Azizi pondered as she opened the door to began letting her colleagues out. "After all, you're no longer a ninja. Wouldn't 'robot' fit better?"

"I prefer 'nindroid,'" Zane said steadily, still not looking back.

Azizi laughed as she grabbed Zane by the arm and pulled him out the door. "Ah, but you see, your preferences no longer matter. 'Robot' it is then!"

The door slammed behind Azizi and Zane with a loud thud.

"...We lost," Cole said quietly. He sat down heavily. "We lost the case. We lost Zane."

"Not for long," Nya said determinedly. "We may have lost the trial, but there's still something we can do. There's always something we can do."

"What?" Jay asked desperately.

"Appeal. We appeal to a higher court. We go all the way up to the Ninjago Supreme Court, and we see what they think of Judge Manthus's decision," Nya stated. She turned to the line of people still sitting behind the defense desk in shocked silence. "And we're going to need all the help we can get to do so. We're going to need you guys."

"I'm in," Dareth said immediately, jumping up. "Azizi Julien better watch out, because the brown ninja is on the case!"

"Well, I'm not sure how much help we'll be, but Edna and I will do whatever we can," Ed promised. "Edna-"

"Already making several notes," Edna told him happily.

"We'll rally the public," Lou said, gesturing to himself and the other Royal Blacksmiths. "I'm sure the majority of Ninjago is already on your side, and there's nothing like a few rousing battle ballads to get the rest of them convinced!"

"I'll start searching through scrolls for anything that might help us," Misako offered.

"And I'll help you," Garmadon added, looking at his wife.

"We can do this. We will do this," Wu told his students reassuringly.

Nya nodded, although whether it was to convince herself or her friends was uncertain. "We can and will."


	2. I guess we never really moved on

**AN: This chapter's title is from "Lips of an Angel" by Hinder, which I don't own. SPOILER/CONTENT WARNING ALERT: this chapter contains Azizi and her scientists talking about bad stuff that they've done to Zane. If you don't want to read that part, stop at the line break (or don't read after the line break and scroll all the way down to leave a review, but that's up to you). I'll summarize the part you skip in the AN at the beginning of the next chapter. There are more background character names in this chapter with hidden meanings if you want to guess it! Again, I don't own any of this.**

* * *

Nya put down the phone. She stared at it for a moment, then she shook her head.

"So? How're they doing?" Lloyd wondered eagerly. "Are they doing good?"

"It didn't sound like they were doing good," Cole doubted.

"I can hope though," Lloyd insisted, not taking his gaze off of Nya. "Well?"

"They're not doing so well," Nya sighed.

"Awwww," Lloyd moped. "I was hoping my mom's research skills would be helpful."

"She is more used to looking at lengthy prophecies than legal printouts," Jay pointed out, not looking up from his computer screen unlike the other ninja.

"True, but I was hoping she'd surprise us," Lloyd complained.

"That may still happen. Misako said she and Sensei Garmadon are only a couple of years back in looking at cases," Nya told him.

Lloyd looked a little bit cheered up, a rarity for the ninja in the past days since the trial. "Yeah! I'm sure when they get a little further back they'll find something super useful."

"And I'm sure when we get a little more into our own work we'll find something equally useful," Cole encouraged his friends. "We should probably get back to it."

"Yeah, we should," Nya said tiredly, sitting back down at her computer.

"You know, this would be so much easier if we actually knew what we were looking for," Kai hinted for what was likely the fifth time that day.

Nya scowled at her brother. "I told you, we're looking for information that'll help us argue that Zane is a person."

"And I told you, we have no idea what that information will look like," Kai shot back, standing up and spreading his arms wide.

"We have some idea," Lloyd offered, tired of hearing Kai and Nya argue. "We know that telling stories about how human-like Zane is isn't going to help us, so we're probably looking for something a bit more, uh, scientific. Something the judge will trust as information. Something we can prove."

"Provable information," Kai mused. He sat back down thoughtfully. "So, like a project? A test? An experiment?"

"Something like that," Nya agreed. "But what?"

Jay glanced up from his computer. Surprisingly, a grin was spread across his face, a sight that hadn't been seen in days. "I may have the answer to that."

* * *

"Fascinating results from that last test," Maximilian Maddox remarked. "I'm sorry I missed it."

Azizi nodded to him. "It's understandable you were busy. You've got a job outside of this research, so do we all, although we each wish we didn't. It makes it so much harder to do this important work."

"Still, the results we're getting are fascinating. Who knew a robot would react to loss of imitation blood so similarly to the fascinating way people react to losing real blood!" Maximilian exclaimed. "Colder skin temperature, confusion, even its fake pulse sped up. It's fascinating."

"Please stop saying 'fascinating,'" Glados Yan groaned. "It's bad enough I have to listen to the robot trying to reason with me not to experiment on it almost all day, every day, I don't need to listen to you saying the same words over and over again too."

"At least I don't regress into pathetic begging and whimpering," Maximilian pointed out.

"I'll give you that," Glados allowed. She looked around at the scientists bustling to and fro around them, working on formatting the results from the past few days. "Say, where's Babbage?"

"Check monitor seven," Azizi instructed.

Glados strode across the room to the bank of screens showing what was happening across the facility and stood on tiptoe to get a good look at the seventh one. "Ahhh. Still synthesizing more of the robot's fake blood to get it running more smoothly again. I must say, he's taken to the more hands-on side of studying artificial intelligence with enthusiasm."

"He really has," Maximilian agreed. "To think, just days ago he fussed about experimenting on something that looks so much like a person, and today he helped drain the robot of thirty percent of its 'blood.' Good for him."

"I think he's almost finished," Glados observed. She tapped the screen with one hand. "See? He's gathering up the containers and heading out, probably to the robot's cell. How long should it take him to fill it up with imitation blood again and get back to the control room to join us?"

Azizi hummed thoughtfully. "All he has to do is put the imitation blood into the replica IV Dr. Richards made and leave it to do its work on the robot. Five minutes, maybe?"

"It would've been a shorter wait if we hadn't experimented with and thus ruined the samples of 'blood' we took," Maximilian stated thoughtfully.

"And what, exactly, are you insinuating?" Azizi said dangerously. "Are you implying that I'm running this experiment the way I should?"

"No, no," Maximilian fumbled. "You're doing incredibly well! I didn't mean to, I didn't think-"

"Exactly. You didn't think," Azizi sighed. "You didn't think of the fact that, if we hadn't taken samples and worked with said samples, we wouldn't be able to synthesize more false blood and therefore would have to wait for the robot's mechanisms to do it much more slowly, thus hindering the amount of work we were able to do in a set amount of time."

"I'm sorry," Maximilian said meekly. "You were right to order those tests."

"You're right I was right," Azizi said happily. She brushed her hands off on each other, as if brushing off the previous conversation. "Now, what else do we want to do today? We've got a lot on our list, and the lower scientists like Dr. Walter and Miss Minsky are coming up with new ones by the hour. There's the sensory deprivation tests, the tendon dissection, the optic removal, the tympanic membrane removal, the water resistance observation-"

"Do we want to do the sensory deprivation stuff along with the optic and tympanic membrane removals, or do we want to them separately?" Glados wondered. "I could see drawbacks for both sides."

"Mostly I see the positives of both sides," Maximilian commented.

"Interesting. Discuss what you're thinking," Azizi commanded.

Maximilian and Glados voiced their opinions for several minutes, and Azizi listened and made her own contributions occasionally, although she was more than content to let the two doctors argue themselves out. Eventually, though, she came to a conclusion. Azizi declared, "We'll do them separately; no need to risk potentially contaminating our data."

"Sounds good to me," Maximilian said hurriedly, nodding to Azizi.

"Me too," Glados said much more breezily.

"So what else is on the schedule for today, Azizi?" Hector Babbage asked as he stepped into the room, wiping imitation blood off of his hands and onto a wet cloth.

"We were just trying to figure that out ourselves," Azizi said merrily. "I must admit, it's a lot more fun than I would've expected to do these experiments. I guess I just forgot how much I loved robotics."

"Or you're taking some sort of pleasure out of the fact that you're experimenting on the thing that partially took your father's attention away from you," Glados pointed out.

Maximilian cringed. "Might want to take that back, Yan."

"She doesn't have to; it is partially true," Azizi admitted.

"Oh, come on! If I had said that, I would've been helping the janitorial crew for a week, not being told that what I said was true," Maximilian protested.

"That's because it's just fun for her to mess with you. You're an easy target," Hector explained as if talking to a child.

Maximilian pouted. "Fine. See if I share my idea for what fascinating thing we should do to the robot next."

"Don't be like that, Maddox, tell us," Glados coaxed.

Maximilian turned away from her.

"Tell us or you're not getting put down as a contributor to the exsanguination experiment," Azizi said flatly.

"Fine, fine! I was thinking about an analysis of its artificial epidermis and dermis via part isolation," Maximilian relented.

"...That's actually a really good idea," Azizi commented. "Doesn't sound like a 'today' thing to me, though. Mr. Engelberger!"

The scientist who was in charge of keeping track of future experiments appeared at Azizi's die. "Yes, ma'am?"

"Put down 'remove the robot's skin' as a promising potential plan," Azizi ordered.

"Yes, ma'am. Will do, ma'am," Mr. Engelberger promised.

"And why don't you move the sensory deprivation to next on our list," Azizi told him.

Mr. Engelberger nodded. "Yes, ma'am."

"Thank you," Azizi practically sang out, and she shooed the scientist away with both hands. "Off you go, then. Go on. Yes, good."

"So we're doing the sensory deprivation tests next?" Hector asked.

Azizi nodded. "I'm thinking bit by bit, switching in and out on what the robot senses, until finally we turn it all off."

"And then what?" Glados prompted eagerly.

Azizi grinned viciously. "Then we put it through an obstacle course."

Glados laughed aloud in delight. "Boy, do I love working here."

"You two are sick," Maximilian told them.

"But you're smiling. You're intrigued too," Glados pointed out.

"Fine, yeah. It's going to be fascinating," Maximilian allowed, smiling wider.

"Say 'fascinating' one more time and you're going to find yourself wishing you were the one going through an obstacle course without any senses to rely on," Glados deadpanned.

Maximilian looked at Azizi. "You're letting her get away with this?"

"It's not like she'll actually do it. She's got a doctorate in ethics and philosophy, it's not like she'll do anything unethical," Azizi told him.

Maximilian looked at Glados and muttered, "Her smile says otherwise."

"You two leave each other alone and concentrate on your jobs," Hector scolded.

"I didn't do anything to her!" Maximilian protested.

"Yes, you did," Glados objected.

"No, I didn't," Maximilian insisted.

"Yes, you-" Glados began.

"All right, that's enough. As amusing as your bickering is, we have work to do," Azizi ordered. She clapped her hands together. "Let's head to room one and the robot!"


	3. But if you never try you'll never know

**AN: Last chapter summary for if you skipped the second half: the scientists bicker about what they want to do to Zane next and, unsurprisingly, decide to be mean. This chapter's title is from "Fix You" by Coldplay, which I do not own. SPOILER/CONTENT WARNING ALERT: this chapter contains some rough things happening to Zane and also Zane thinking about hard stuff that's already happened to him. If you don't want to read that part, stop at the line break (or don't read after the line break and scroll all the way down to leave a review, but that's up to you). I'll summarize the part you skip in the AN at the beginning of the next chapter. Neither ELIZA nor PARRY belong to me, I'm just using their names as sly references.**

* * *

Jay finished his brief explanation and looked at his friends and his sensei hopefully. "So? What do you think?"

Cole leaned back in his chair, scrutinizing the papers spread across the conference room table. "So what we're saying is, in order to save Zane, we need Zane's help."

"In a word? Yes," Nya sighed. Stopping her pacing back and forth behind her seat for the moment, she tapped a piece of paper with the pencil in her hand. "I looked it up and it checks out that this Eliza Parry Test thing Jay found is supposed to show if a computer is indistinguishable from a human. If we can visit Zane, or have him visit us, and get him to take the Eliza Parry Test, when he passes it, that'll be a huge boost for us."

"That's a big 'if,'" Lloyd pointed out. "How are we going to get to see Zane?"

"Easy. We're ninja," Kai said confidently. "We just sneak in."

Nya shook her head. "Uh-uh. That's illegal. We can't use illegally obtained evidence in the courtroom. We have to go about this right, and by 'right' I mean 'not illegally.'"

Kai slumped back in his seat. "Fine. We'll do it the 'right' way."

"So, who will call Azizi and inquire about visiting Zane?" Wu asked.

"Not it," Jay said immediately.

"Not it!" Kai and Lloyd said in unison.

"Not it!" Nya and Cole said together.

"Looks like it's up to Sensei," Jay chuckled nervously.

"My students," Wu said, and he paused dramatically. "You are a bunch of wimps."

"Sensei, please do it. You're probably the best choice," Cole pointed out.

Wu shook his head, but he stood up and walked over to the phone across the room. He picked it up and paused. "...Does anyone actually know Azizi Julien's number?"

The ninja all looked at each other blankly.

"...No," Nya admitted.

"I'll be right back!" Jay blurted, jumping up from his chair and racing out of the room. He headed right for the computer lab and, without even sitting down in the chair, did some quick searching. After scribbling a set of numbers down on a nearby scrap of paper with a stubby pencil he found on the ground, Jay raced back to the conference room and thrust the scrap of paper at Wu. "Got it!"

"This is Azizi Julien's phone number?" Wu inquired, taking the paper and looking at it closely.

"Yeah! The internet says so," Jay confirmed.

"That does not bode well," Wu mused. "But I will try it."

Punching in the numbers Jay had written down, Wu put the phone on speaker so the ninja wouldn't be confused by a one-sided conversation and waited a moment as it rang.

With a click, someone picked up and said, "Hello, Julien Law and Robotics here, this is Isaac, how can I help you?"

"I need to speak with Azizi Julien," Wu said firmly.

"Of course. Is this a matter of law, robotics, or personal business?" "Isaac" asked.

"All of the above," Wu stated.

"Understood. We have an hour-long appointment two weeks from tomorrow at three, would that work for you?" Isaac inquired.

"I'm afraid not. This matter is urgent," Wu stated. The appeal case was, after all, only a week and a half away.

"All right. Let me see here, I've got a fifteen-minute appointment a week from yesterday, how's that?" Isaac offered.

"Could you instead put me through to Azizi's phone? That was where I was hoping to reach," Wu explained.

Isaac hesitated. "You want to talk to her now?"

"Now," Wu affirmed.

"That's not really a part of my job. I mean, I'm not allowed to put you right through to her," Isaac fumbled over his words.

"Tell her Sensei Wu has a question for her," Wu suggested. "I am certain she will want to speak with me."

"Oh! You're, you're Sensei Wu! Whoa! I can't believe it, I'm talking to Sensei Wu, the Sensei Wu who teaches the ninja, wow, Sensei Wu, I'm actually talking to Sensei Wu," Isaac rambled.

Jay and Lloyd stifled their laughter. Kai had no such qualms and began chuckling lowly.

"Yes, you are talking to Sensei Wu. May I speak to Azizi now?" Wu asked.

"Just a second, I'm gonna ask Azizi if she wants to speak with you," Isaac offered. After a few moments of silence, his voice returned to the phone. "Uh, yeah, yeah she wants to speak with you! She says she's actually been awaiting your call."

Wu raised his eyebrows. "Oh?"

"Uh-huh. So, here she is! Thank you for calling, Sensei Wu!" Isaac exclaimed.

There was a soft click, then Azizi's voice oozed through the phone. "Sensei Wu. I must admit, I'm surprised it took you this long to call."

Wu exchanged glances with his students. "You are?"

"Indeed. I was informed of the upcoming appeal by my publicist, in only the vaguest terms of course, you know how publicists are," Azizi said breezily.

"I do not know how publicists are," Wu admitted.

"Well, they're very vague, I'll tell you that," Azizi confided. "So! You've come to your senses and see how valuable owning the most advanced robot in Ninjago is, and you want to sue me for ownership."

"...What?" Wu said slowly.

"What is she talking about?" Nya murmured.

"You know, the appeal? You're trying to get ownership of the robot again. Let me tell you, it's a long shot, but who am I to tell you not to try? Go for it, little ninja, but be prepared to be let down. The law is on my side," Azizi explained.

"You assume too much. We are not suing for ownership, we are appealing to get the decision about Zane being property overturned," Wu told her.

After a brief pause, Azizi laughed. "Seriously? You're seriously still on about getting that thing named a person?"

"We are 'still on about' it yes," Wu said evenly but a little loudly, speaking over Cole, Jay, Kai, Lloyd, and Nya's angrily hissed whispers at Azizi's comment.

"It's a foolish thing to do, but I suppose foolishness has never stopped people before," Azizi chuckled. "Let's see, then. If you're not calling me to try and buy my property from me before the appeal even occurs, then you're probably calling to request a visit to the robot for information-gathering purposes. Am I correct?"

"You're correct," Wu admitted.

"Hmmm. Well, I certainly don't want to grant an audience to you, especially not with my property, but I can't see a different reason why not to. After all, there's no way you're winning the appeal. I suppose it wouldn't do any harm to allow you to visit," Azizi pondered.

"Thank you. When and where may we all come?" Wu asked.

Azizi laughed again. "Oh, you can't 'all come.' I don't want the presence of the whole ninja team and friends unnerving my scientists in their workspace. They've got quite a few projects going on and I don't want any of them getting messed up. One of you may come. One."

"Five of us," Wu bargained.

"Two," Azizi offered.

"Four," Wu tried.

"Two," Azizi said firmly.

"Three," Wu attempted.

"One," Azizi reduced her offer.

"Two?" Wu tried.

"Fine, I can live with two," Azizi allowed. "Who will I be expecting?"

"One moment, please," Wu said immediately, as Cole, Kai, Lloyd, Jay, and Nya each thrust a hand in the air eagerly. He covered the mouthpiece of the phone and glanced around the room. "Jay? Nya? Would you two go?"

Jay and Nya nodded eagerly as Lloyd groaned and Cole slumped back in his chair in disappointment.

"Aw, why do they get to go?" Kai objected.

"They get to go as they are the two most knowledgeable about both law and this Eliza Parry test, not to mention the very important topic of robotics," Wu explained.

"Okay, I get why law and the test would be good things to know about, but I think I know a lot about laws too, and I could study up on the test thing real quick, so why does whoever goes need to know about robotics? Why is that important?" Kai argued.

Wu looked uncomfortable. After a moment, he said quietly, "Because Azizi and her scientists have had Zane to experiment on for days at this point, and we don't know what kind of shape he's in. He may require… Repairs."

Kai gulped. "Oh."

Wu nodded to him grimly and uncovered the phone's mouthpiece. "Azizi?"

"Still here," Azizi's voice said immediately.

"You'll be expecting Jay, the blue ninja, and Nya, the samurai," Wu told her. "When and where should we send them?"

"Now sounds good. We're in the middle of an experiment, but we don't have any other ones planned for the next little while once we get to processing results. If your blue ninja and samurai hurry and get here as our current experiment ends, they can probably get a good fifteen minutes in of… Whatever they're planning on doing," Azizi said graciously.

"Understood. I'll get them going," Wu promised.

"You do that," Azizi stated. There was a click, and then the sound of static as Azizi ended the phone call without a word of farewell.

Wu hung up as well. He looked at Jay and Nya. "Get prepared, quickly. Grab whatever you might need, and don't forget all the papers on the Eliza Parry Test. Get ready, and go."

* * *

He fell. Crashing to the ground as he tripped over the last part of the obstacle course, he barely even winced at the impact of the hard floor against his body. It was far from the most painful thing he had felt that day. Something collided with his side, a kick from a foot, most likely. He hardly winced at that as well.

Someone grabbed his arm and pulled upwards. He did not want to stand, didn't know if he had it in him, but he had no choice. If he did something the scientists didn't desire, or worse, if he did not do something they did desire, like in this case, out would come the remote that had been synced to his systems at the end of the very first day, and he would be left trembling and wishing he obeyed the first time.

So he stood and let the unknown person pull him along. They walked for what felt like hours in his unseeing, unhearing daze, although according to his internal sensors it was only around five minutes. Finally, they came to a stop for a moment, presumably while the scientist leading him around unlocked a door.

A hand pushed at his back, and he allowed it and the hand on his arm to steer him forward several more steps. Something cold and hard clasped tightly, even abrasively, around his wrist. He did nothing to stop it. It would only be the chain to attach him to the back wall of his cell. And if it wasn't the chain, it wasn't as if he could do anything about it anyway.

Fleetingly, he entertained the thought of fighting back, using all the skills he had been taught to incapacitate the next person who came to fetch him. It would be simple enough. They were scientists after all, most likely untrained in the martial arts, and he was a ninja-

Had been. Had been a ninja.

He shook off the negative thoughts. There was no use in self-pity; it would not change his situation. There might, however, be some use in fighting.

He had noticed they did not bring the remote every time anymore. Azizi had set several scientists the task of universalizing the remote they had developed for use on him, making the remote into something that could control machines in addition to agonizing them, and that meant the other scientists could not always bring it with them when they came to get him for a new experiment. So, if next time the scientists came for him was one of the times when they did not bring the remote, he could resist. That would buy him a few minutes of peace and, while the scientists would inevitably go get the remote and force him into obedience, every moment to himself, even those immediately followed by pain, was a gift. This was without mentioning how much being unable to fight back damaged his view of himself. He had been a ninja once, and now he was helpless, forced to do whatever his captors wanted. Fighting back would undoubtedly buoy his spirits.

He pulled at the chain attaching him to the back wall, testing its length. It was short, which would not help him fight back. The chain just barely long enough for him to sit with his hands in his lap, which was how he spent most of his time in his cell, sitting, thinking, trying to meditate. He would not do that now. Instead, he stayed standing, feet spread slightly in a steady stance, arms hanging loosely by his sides in preparation to swing them out to defend himself, head held high, not a suspicious pose on the outside but a fierce and ready one on the inside.

He stood like that for several moments. Nothing happened. There were sometimes gaps in between experiments, but never a long period of waiting except for during the night shift, when fewer scientists worked. Night had not yet fallen, though, so he would not be alone for long.

Only a few more moments passed when something gently rested on his arm. It was a hand. The scientists were here to take him to a new experiment.

He did not stop to consider how lightly the hand positioned itself on him. Some scientists liked to think like he was there willingly and would follow them meekly no matter what experiment they had in mind. Those scientists thought wrong.

He lashed out, striking with his opposite arm at the arm attached to the hand on him. The hand retracted speedily, but he did not let up. Kicking out, his foot connected with something solid, presumably a leg. Success, he thought grimly, and he settled into a fighting stance now that the element of surprise had come and gone.

Again, a hand tried to rest itself upon him, on his shoulder this time. He chopped at it with his own hand, landing a firm blow. Again, the hand retreated quickly.

Waiting, he prepared for the next grasping motion. It came hesitantly, after several moments of him waiting in the silence and darkness. He wished he could turn his vision and hearing back on; having all of his senses would be a huge benefit to him as he fought for a few more moments of reprieve and a few last scraps of dignity. But his panels were all crudely wired shut to keep him from "interfering" with the experiments, and of all the tools available within him, a wire cutter was not one of them. So he was forced to fight, unseeing, unhearing, unknowing of what was coming.

The hand on his shoulder tried to pull him forward. Instead of complying, he stepped back, shrinking against the wall, leveling a glare in the general direction of where he thought the scientists were. He was tempted to speak, to say something defiant, but he knew better than that. To fight back was one level of disobedience, a curious one, unexpected from a machine, but to speak to the scientists as if he were a person was an entirely different and more serious transgression, one he had already paid the price for several times that day and one he was not in favor of paying for again. Instead, he raised his eyebrows, a "come and get me, if you dare" kind of expression.

He expected the scientists to leave the room, to go notify the higher-ups that "the robot" was disobeying, to retrieve the remote. Interestingly enough, they did not. The hands kept coming, kept trying to grab him, and he kept pushing them away, although his efforts got slower and weaker with each motion. The fighting was making him dizzy and tired, or rather, dizzier and more tired. He had not drank anything that day, nor eaten anything for the last three days. The scientists were running a long-term experiment to see how well his power source worked to sustain him when he was not receiving secondary power from converting food to energy. He was allowed to drink a little water, but only rarely, just enough to keep his gears from locking up. As it was, it was only a matter of time before his systems gave in, too weak to be fighting off the scientists like this.

It was a kick that did it. He tried to do a high kick, preferably to the torso of one of the scientists, but he stumbled and lost his balance.

He fell. Crashing to the ground stomach-down, he stifled a hurt cry. Weakened from fighting as he was, it was harder to ignore the pain, even as little as it was in comparison to the pains he had suffered throughout that day and the past days.

A weight came down on his back, holding him down. Interesting. He supposed they were tired of him fighting back and wanted to keep him down until the remote, which they had presumably called for somehow, arrived. If he had been in any better shape, he would have thrown whichever scientist was on him off, but he was hurting and tired and weak and dizzy, so he did nothing.

The weight lessened slightly, still a noticeable pressure but now an easier to bear one. Hands grabbed at him, flipping him over onto his back, pulling up the loose shirt he had been given to wear, grasping at the wires holding his chest panel shut. He let them, too exhausted and weary to do anything.

Something scraped against against his stomach, presumably a pair of wire cutters. He felt the wires clamping his chest panel closed give way and be pulled out. It was an uncomfortable sensation, but only mildly painful, so he kept his face firmly in a stony glare rather than wincing.

A hand brushed over his internal switches and wires exploringly, and he shivered, partially from the disagreeable sensation and partially from barely-hidden fear. He felt the hand pause, lingering on a certain switch, then carefully flip the switch it held.

The blackness that made up his vision flickered to white, then back to black, and then finally-

It could not be.

His mouth dropped open.

It had to be some sort of- some kind of- some manner of illusion, some strange feedback. It could not be, it simply couldn't.

He squeezed his eyes shut and clamped his mouth closed. He refused to believe it, refused to acknowledge it, refused to even see it. It would be too cruel when it turned to be not reality, which is how it would turn out. Azizi would never allow it to be true, never.

The hand was still roaming around inside him, now pausing on a different switch. The hand hesitated, but flicked the switch.

With a buzz, his hearing came back online, and what he heard was even more unbelievable than what he saw.

He heard his name.

"-Zane?"

He opened his eyes, and the scene he had just seen, the one he had refused to believe, reappeared, this time with sound.

Grinning down at him were Jay and Nya, Jay holding a pair of wire clippers and sitting next to a large tool box, Nya kneeling over him with one hand on his shoulder and her other hand still on his "audio" switch.

Zane couldn't help it. His mouth dropped open again. He stared, speechless.

"Hey there!" Nya said cheerfully, withdrawing her hand from inside his torso. She climbed off of him and gave a little wave. "How are you doing?"

Zane's eyes darted back and forth as he sat up.

"Are you sure you flipped the right switches? He doesn't seem like he's really seeing and hearing us," Jay said anxiously, peering into the still open chest panel.

"I'm sure," Nya confirmed. "He's just shocked, I bet."

Zane nodded slowly.

Nya cheered. "Yeah! You heard that! You did hear that, right?"

Zane nodded again.

"Oh, good," Jay said, heaving a sigh of relief. "You really had me worried there for a second. I wasn't sure just flipping your switches was going to be enough to fix you."

"Why are you here?" Zane's voice was rusty from disuse, even to his own newly-working-again ears. Feeling self-conscious, he closed his chest panel, adjusted his shirt, cleared his throat, and tried again. "Why are you here? No, how are you here?"

"We convinced Azizi to let us come see you. Well, Sensei Wu convinced her," Nya corrected herself.

"We're working on the appeal, you know? So we needed to come see you to get some information," Jay explained.

"The appeal?" Zane repeated, confused.

Jay and Nya traded glances.

"The appeal," Jay said again. "The one in like a week and a half? That appeal?"

"Didn't somebody tell you about it?" Nya asked.

Zane shook his head. "No one here talks to me other than to ask questions about my mechanisms and then yell at me when they do not get the answer they expected."

Jay winced. "Yikes."

"Well, we're appealing against the decision Judge Manthus made," Nya explained. "We're trying to get you declared to be legally a person. I think we've got a good chance at winning the appeal, getting you out of here, and bringing you home, too."

Zane's mouth dropped open for the third time in quick succession. "There's a chance I could get out of here?"

"A pretty good chance, in my opinion," Nya confirmed. She nudged him with her elbow and teased gently, "You'd like that, I bet."

Zane should have agreed flippantly. He should have thanked them over and over. He should have asked what he could do to help them get ready for the appeal. Instead, he froze. A chance to get out. He had a chance to get out.

"...Zane? You okay, buddy?" Jay asked nervously, hand drifting to the tool box.

"I am fine," Zane said automatically.

"No, you're not fine," Nya butted in. "You fought us off with a vengeance when we came in here at first, so obviously you were expecting something much worse than us coming to tell you that you've got a chance to get out of here. Everything's gone wrong for you, and you still say you're fine?"

Zane nodded and insisted, "I am fine."

Nya looked skeptical. "Right. You're fine. And you're also not chained to a wall in a tiny room in the middle of a scientific facility full of people who call you a machine and make you go through terrible experiments."

Zane full-body shuddered involuntarily at the word "experiments."

"Yeah, that's what I thought. You're not fine," Nya told him.

Gingerly, Jay laid a hand on Zane's leg. "You know, it's okay not be fine. I should know, I'm not fine all the time. You've seen me freak out, you know it happens."

"And when he freaks out, we let him freak out, because that's what he needs to do to get over it," Nya added. "What we're saying is, tell us what's really going on, beyond being 'fine' or being chained to a wall in a tiny room in the middle of a scientific facility full of people who call you a machine and make you go through terrible experiments."

"...I am not fine," Zane said slowly. "I am tired. I am aching. Above all, I am scared."

Nya made a sympathetic noise.

Jay scooted in closer. "Well, we've got a few minutes. We do need you to take a test to show how human-like you are, so we've got more evidence for the appeal, but once we do that, you can tell us all about everything that's happened while you've been here."

Zane smiled for the first time since the trial.


	4. Got to see this through

**AN: Last chapter summary for if you skipped the second half: Zane gets locked in a cell with his vision and hearing turned off, so when Jay and Nya come to talk to him, he tries to fight them off, but given his weakness from being mistreated he doesn't do too well. Jay and Nya get Zane's vision and hearing turned back on and the three of them talk. This chapter's title is from "Wires" by Athlete, which I do not own. SPOILER/CONTENT WARNING ALERT: this chapter contains Jay and Nya talking about some bad things happening to Zane and also more rough stuff happening to Zane (because he hasn't been through enough already, obviously). If you don't want to read that part, well, you probably don't want to read this chapter at all. I'll summarize it at the beginning of the next chapter. There are several more background characters with special names in this chapter, go ahead and guess what they're from! (I don't own what they're from.)**

* * *

When Jay and Nya walked shakily into the conference room, they found Cole, Kai, Lloyd, and Sensei Wu sitting exactly where they had left them, looking through the papers that had all the information already gathered for the appeal.

"Well?" Kai demanded immediately, standing up as Nya and Jay entered the room and set their papers down on the table. "What happened?"

Jay looked at Nya. Nya looked at Jay. Neither of them said anything for a long moment.

"C'mon, tell us," Lloyd nearly begged.

"Well, we've got good news and bad news," Jay hedged, voice trembling.

"The good news is that we got Zane to take the Eliza Parry test," Nya offered weakly. "He got the highest score in the highest category possible, not that I'm surprised."

"And the bad news?" Cole asked warily.

Jay gulped. "Uhhhhh…"

Nya went right into it. "Zane's not doing so well. Well, actually he's doing better than I would expect, given some of the stuff he told us, but he's still not in good shape."

"What stuff did he tell you?" Kai questioned.

"Basically, take every inhumane 'experiment' you can think to run on somebody, then multiply them by five. That's what Zane's been through," Nya said darkly.

"I don't even want to repeat some of the stuff he said Azizi's had those scientists do to him," Jay stated, shaking his head.

Kai stood up abruptly and walked to the nearest wall. Hauling one arm back, he punched the wall with all his strength then recoiled, shaking his hand out. He glared at the wall and pulled his other arm back.

"Kai," Wu warned.

"Since I can't punch Azizi, I'm punching this wall," Kai declared, and he punched the wall a second time, grunting when his hand made contact.

"Kai, that's not going to help Zane," Cole sighed.

Kai spun around to face him. "Neither just is sitting around listening to all the stuff he's going through!"

"You're both right and wrong. We need to talk about what Jay and Nya learned so we'll be prepared to help Zane when we get him back, but we also need to keep working on getting ready for the appeal. We can split; some of us stay here, and some of us go back to researching for the appeal, then switch, so we've always got somebody working," Cole said calmly. He stood and walked over to Kai, slinging an arm around Kai's shoulders. "Let's go to the computer room. Come on. You and me, let's go do some more of that research-type work."

"Fine," Kai agreed, still shaking out the pain from both his hands. "But if I come across any cases of people experimenting on robots in any of my research, I'm punching another wall."

"You do that, and I'll cook you some violetberry soup, have Lloyd contaminate it with weird spices, and make you eat it," Cole commented as he guided Kai out of the room.

Kai's yell of "Ugh!" could be heard clearly in conference room even though he was already halfway down the hall.

Lloyd laughed a little, looking out the door after Kai, but he quickly sobered when he turned back to look at Jay and Nya and saw their grim faces. "So, how are we gonna do this?"

Nya frowned. "Well, we didn't exactly take the time to take notes. We were more focused on comforting rather than collecting information, I guess."

"That's fine," Wu said calmly, sipping a cup of tea. "Simply tell us what you remember."

So Jay and Nya went back and forth, recalling all they could from their conversation with Zane, snippet after snippet of dreadful details. Lloyd's face screwed up further and further as the telling went on, and after a minute Wu stopped sipping his tea and just sat there, frigidly expressionless, although he grasped his cup ever tighter.

Finally, Jay's voice trailed off. "And I think that's everything. That's everything, right?"

"I think so. No, wait, did I mention the fact the scientists were testing the abilities of Zane's power source, and that they decided the best way to do so was starve him?" Nya wondered.

"Yeah, you said that right before you talked about the scientists dislocating his shoulder to see if it would snap back in like a human's would and right after you told Sensei and Lloyd that the scientists seeing if his skin was fireproof," Jay confirmed.

Lloyd made a loud gagging noise, then croaked, "Sorry. Man, I can't even hear about this stuff without wanting to throw up. I can't imagine how Zane's living it."

Nya nodded bleakly. "Yeah. And he's got to keep living it for another a week and a half."

Lloyd shook his head. "At least we're going to get him home after that. I mean, probably."

"Not even probably. We're definitely getting Zane back," Nya said firmly.

"Right, yeah, definitely," Lloyd agreed. He pushed his chair back from the table and stood up. "Okay, I'm gonna head to the computer lab and get back to researching."

"I will join you," Wu offered, and he stood and followed Lloyd out.

"At least that's over with," Jay sighed, collapsing into a seat.

"No, it isn't," Nya said grimly.

Jay frowned. "It isn't? I mean, yeah, obviously it isn't over for Zane, and it won't be until after the appeal, but I was talking about having to talk about what Azizi's doing to him, that's over with."

"That's not over with either," Nya stated. "We still have to tell Cole and Kai."

Jay gulped. "Oh no."

* * *

"Ms. Julien! Ms. Julien!" A voice called.

Azizi turned around from discussing the results of the robot's navigation of the obstacle course with Maximilian, Glados, and Hector to see a young man striding up behind her, a name tag reading "Mr. Capek" on his lab coat and a frown on his face. Azizi raised an eyebrow at him. "Yes? What is it?"

"Um, it's the robot, ma'am. It's fighting us," Mr. Capek said nervously, fidgeting with the hems of his lab coat sleeves.

"What do you mean it's fighting you?" Maximilian said incredulously. "I thought we broke it of that habit."

"Apparently it's not broken enough, Dr. Maddox. It's using the skills it learned as a ninja against us. It acted all weak until we unchained it from the wall, then it started kicking and punching and doing all sorts of stuff," Mr. Capek told him. "We all limped out of the room and locked it in its cell, but now it's battering at the door and we're too scared to try and get it to stop."

Azizi sighed. "So go get the remote control and put a stop to its nonsense."

"I'm afraid the team working on the remote control are at the end of dissembling it to make it more efficient," Mr. Capek said, practically quivering in his shoes. "It'll take them close to an hour to put it back together."

"And we don't want to wait an hour," Glados mused.

"Exactly, Dr. Yan," Mr. Capek confirmed. "What should we do?"

Azizi thought about that for a moment. Her eyes gleamed, and a cruel smile curved its way across her face. She turned back to Maximilian, Glados, and specifically Hector. "Babbage, you're friends with the head of the security team, aren't you? Maria, right?"

"Maria de Vaucanson, yes," Hector agreed.

"How good is she with the standard issue Hino–Komuro M1908?" Azizi asked casually.

"Very good," Hector told her earnestly.

Azizi's grin widened. "Good enough to incapacitate without seriously injuring?"

Hector's eyes grew wide. "Oh! I see what you mean. Yes, she's that good."

"All right. Call her on the intercom and tell her to meet us outside the robot's cell if she's not already there," Azizi ordered.

Hector shuffled over to the nearest intercom interface, pressed the button, and said into it, "Calling Officer de Vaucanson, calling Officer de Vaucanson."

A moment passed, then a new voice crackled over the intercom, "This is de Vaucanson, what's the situation?"

"Could you meet myself, Ms. Julien, and a few others outside the robot's cell as soon as possible?" Hector asked into the interface.

"I was already on my way there when you called," the voice responded over the intercom.

"Good, see you there," Hector stated, and he shuffled away from the intercom interface to follow Azizi, Glados, Maximilian, and Mr. Capek out the door of the control room. They walked down winding hallways, passing anxiously chattering scientists, and soon arrived at their destination.

"Maria," Hector greeted a woman with short curly red hair who stood in front of a shaking door. "This is Mr. Capek. He told us about the situation."

"Mrs. Devol here told me," Maria drawled, gesturing over her shoulder to a nervous-looking elderly woman who was wringing her own hands. "So, the robot's gotten fed up?"

"Don't be silly, Officer de Vaucanson," Azizi said crisply. "The robot couldn't have gotten fed up, because it has no real emotions to get tired or bored with."

Maria nodded slowly. "Of course. Then what happened?"

"Its self-protective programming is clearly malfunctioning. It must believe that it will be safest locked in its cell and therefore took steps to get locked in," Azizi explained. "We must show its programming that we won't tolerate disobedience, and since we don't have the remote currently, we'll have to take a more extreme path. Officer de Vaucanson, do you have your Hino–Komuro M1908?"

Maria shifted her security officer's jacket to one side and patted a small distinctly-shaped pouch on her belt. "Right here."

"Good. I want you to use it on the robot," Azizi stated.

Maria grinned lazily. "Perimeters?"

"Minimal damage, maximum discomfort," Azizi said.

Licking her lips, Maria nodded, backing up a few steps to be prepared. "Whenever you're ready."

Azizi turned to the elderly woman behind Maria. "Mrs. Devol, would you get the door prepared to be opened?"

Mrs. Devol bit her lower lip, but she walked over to the quaking door and typed in a sequence on a keypad next to the door. She hesitated with her finger over the "enter" key and looked to Azizi.

"Ready," Maria reminded.

"Open it," Azizi commanded.

In quick succession, five things happened.

Mrs. Devol hit the "enter" key.

The door slid open.

The robot barrelled out.

Maria drew a pistol from her belt, aimed, and fired twice.

The robot collapsed with a wordless scream.

For a few moments, all was silent and still.

"Got it right in the knees, bam-bam," Maria crowed, holstering her Hino–Komuro M1908 proudly. She strutted over to the robot and nudged it with a foot, rolling it over none too gently as it groaned at the movement. She eyed it up and down, appraising it, before saying, "Yup, right there in the knees, one after another. Very nice."

"But how much did you damage it?" Azizi fussed, coming to stand beside Maria. "Robot, you have permission to speak. Tell us how functional you are."

The robot opened its mouth to speak, but only a stifled sob came out.

"Oh, stop that," Azizi dismissed. "It doesn't hurt you. You just think you're hurt, you don't actually feel pain, it's just all code to you."

"No, I am fairly certain I am in pain," the robot gritted out through clenched teeth.

"That's not telling us how functional you are. In fact, I'm fairly certain that was back talk. Don't back talk, and don't speak unless you're saying what we tell you to say, in this case giving a functionality report," Azizi commanded. When the robot didn't immediately speak, she turned to Maria. "Shoot it again."

"Not functional!" The robot yelped before Maria could unholster her pistol again. "I am not functional! I certainly can't walk, and I do not think I can stand either."

"Maria, stand down. Robot? Try standing," Azizi stated.

The robot paused uncertainly, almost as if it was thinking about saying something rebellious.

"Try standing, or Maria will shoot you again and then you'll stand," Azizi said coolly.

With shaking arms, the robot managed to push itself into a sitting position, but when it tried to go to its hands and knees, it shrieked in pain. Its arms buckled and it crumpled to the ground once more.

"Apparently it can't stand," Maria observed boredly.

"Did you have to shoot it twice?" Hector asked, raising his eyebrows. "If you only shot one of its knee joints then it could've hopped."

"Yeah, hopped its way right at us and attacked us," Maria drawled, giving him a pointed look. "You stick to your computer chips and circuit boards and let me decide how and where to shoot things."

Hector laughed. "Okay, okay."

"How are we getting it to the next experiment? For that matter, how are we even going to do the next experiment?" Maximilian wondered tentatively.

Azizi considered that for a moment. "Well, we were planning on having the water resistance observation next, but we can't do that when the robot has two bullet holes in it. Instead, let's do the tendon dissection, since we've already damaged its legs as is. This way, we don't have to fix its legs twice, once for repairing from the bullets and once for repairing from dissecting the apparatuses that function as its tendons. As for getting the robot to an experiment room… Officer de Vaucanson, would you mind calling your two strongest security officers here? That should do us."

Maria nodded and strolled back over to the intercom. Pressing the button, she said calmly, "Officers Kaufmann and Tanaka, report to the robot's cell. I repeat, Officers Kaufmann and Tanaka, report to the robot's cell."

The group waited a few moments, Hector and Maria chit-chatting idly about weekend plans while Azizi and Glados took up a conversation about their goals for the upcoming experiment. Maximilian, Mr. Capek, and Mrs. Devol just stood in silence, Maximilian occasionally kicking idly at the prone robot and laughing at it when it cried out.

Soon enough, two security officers rounded the nearest corner and made their way down the hall, stopping in front of Maria.

"You called us," one officer began.

"So what's the situation?" The other asked.

Maria pointed to Azizi. "Ms. Julien wants you two to pick the robot up and carry it to an experiment room."

"We can do that," the first stated.

"Which experiment room are we taking it to?" The second inquired.

"Just follow me," Azizi said casually, adding, "That goes for the rest of you, too. Come on now. Let's get back to experimenting."

Azizi started walking down the hall, the others trailing after her in an odd sort of parade, first Maximilian, Glados, and Hector, then the two security officers carrying the robot between them by the arms and legs much to its discomfort, then Maria, then finally Mr. Capek and Mrs. Devol. But after a second, Azizi paused in her tracks, making all the others stop as well. "Hold on."

"What is it?" Hector wondered.

Azizi didn't answer. She turned around and walked back past Maximilian, Glados, and Hector, stopping in front of the security officers, or rather, in front of the robot they were carrying. She leaned in, peering at its face.

The robot stared back as evenly as it could through the grimace of pain it wore.

"Let this be a lesson to you," Azizi said coolly. "You are mine, my property. You will do as I tell you to do, and when someone under me tells you to do something under my orders, you will do as they tell you to do as well. In short, I say 'jump,' you say?"

"I cannot and will not jump, as you just had me shot in both knees," the robot stated calmly.

Azizi's hands lunged forward and, in perfect unison, grabbed both of the robot's knees and squeezed.

The robot jolted in the security officers' grip and gasped raggedly.

"No," Azizi hissed. "I say 'jump,' you say 'how high?' Actually, I say 'jump' and you don't say anything at all, you just jump and I'll only specify how high if I want to. Got it?"

The robot said nothing.

Azizi dug her hands in harder and, over the robot's pained screeching, said loudly, "Got it? I say 'jump,' you jump. Say it!"

"You say 'jump,' I jump," the robot choked out.

Releasing the robot's knees, Azizi took a step back, pleased with herself. She wiped her hands, which were streaked with an odd oily substance that was leaking from the robot, on her labcoat and grinned radiantly.

"That is, I jump until my family wins the appeal and I get out of here," the robot said, giving a strained smile.

Azizi's grin disappeared instantly. She peered around the security officers and met Maria's eyes. "Shoot it again."


	5. If one door opens to another door closed

**AN: Last chapter summary for if you skipped it: Jay and Nya fill in the others on how well Zane did on the Eliza Parry test. Meanwhile, Zane decides to rebel against the scientists. In short, that doesn't go well for him (he gets shot several times). This chapter's title comes from "My Wish" by Rascal Flatts, which I do not own. Just one more chapter to go after this!**

* * *

Zane knew the day of the appeal had come, even though he had yet to be told that personally. It was not hard to deduce by the fact that he had been dragged out of his cell, handcuffed to a security officer on either side of him, and marched all the way to the lobby of Julien Law and Robotics. Without a single scientist anywhere to be seen or heard, it was obvious that he was not to be experimented on at that moment, and the only logical reason for that was if it was time for the appeal.

Glancing around the lobby idly, Zane waited, but he did not have to wait long. Not long after the two security officers had forced him into a standstill in the center of the lobby, the sound of shoes clicking against the ornately-tiled floor alerted him to the coming presence of another person.

"Officer Kaufmann, Officer Tanaka," Azizi said cordially, coming around in front of them.

"Ms. Julien," the two officers said in unison, nodding at her.

"I got the upgraded remote, now we can get going," Azizi sang out, pulling that dreadful device from her pocket and dangling it in front of Zane. "So, robot, if you even think about trying to escape, you won't get anywhere."

Zane did not respond. He knew better than to do that. If he tried, either Azizi would use the upgraded remote to control him and force his mouth shut, or she would let him speak and then punish him for it.

Azizi turned on her heel and strutted out of the lobby, and the security officers pulled Zane along, not that they needed to do so. Zane was eager to get out the facility for the first time since he had first entered Azizi's domain right after the trial what felt like years ago.

Azizi led the way out of Julien Law and Robotics and into a limousine. She sat up front next to the driver, while the two security officers shoved Zane into the back and piled in after him awkwardly. They drove through the city, weaving around slower cars with ease, and Zane stared out the tinted windows, drinking in the outside world eagerly.

Finally, they slowed to a stop in front of a courthouse, interestingly enough the Ninjago Supreme Court Building. Apparently the appeal had been filed with the highest court possible. Zane was not sure how to feel about that, as it meant whatever decision was made would be final. He guessed wryly that he would just have to wait and see which way the court decided.

The security officers dragged him out of the limousine and followed Azizi into the courthouse. They walked down winding hallways and up a flight of stairs to enter a big pair of doors into a quite large courtroom.

"That's our side, over there," Azizi told the security officers, gesturing to one area of the courtroom, specifically a long desk with four chairs behind it. "You two get the robot seated. I'm going to go make nice with the press."

The two security officers nodded curtly and hauled Zane over to the place Azizi had pointed out. Azizi headed over to the spectators section and chatted genially with all those seated there. Zane noted that so far, only people he did not know were there, so he drifted off in thought, something he'd gotten rather good at doing in the past weeks.

A loud bang a few minutes later startled Zane out of his musings on how the appeal would probably take place. He whirled around in his seat, or at least, he tried to whirl around. The security officers still handcuffed to him, one on each side, kept him in place. Or rather, they kept his torso and arms in place. They had nothing to keep his head in place, Zane realized. So he simply spun his head around completely to face the back of the room.

There they were. In strode Nya, Kai, Cole, Lloyd, Jay, and Sensei Wu, soon followed by a large assortment of family, friends, and allies.

Zane saw them immediately, but at first, they did not see him. They were too focused on getting to their seats, chattering loudly, talking over each other, interrupting and getting interrupted in their haste to finish their conversations and reviewing of the case before it was time for the appeal to start. Zane had missed that chaos.

As they took their seats, they began to quiet down and look around the room.

It was Lloyd who spotted him first. A huge grin spread across Lloyd's face and he sprung up from his seat, pointing. "Zane!"

The others all looked where Lloyd was pointing. Smiles spread across faces where grim determination had been before. Kai, Cole, Jay, Nya, and Wu all stood again and, along with Lloyd, began hurrying across the courtroom toward Zane.

Azizi got to him first, having turned at the sound of Zane's name. Her eyes were narrowed and her eyebrows furrowed. She stood between Zane and his family.

Lloyd, Sensei Wu, Cole, Kai, Nya, and Jay slowed to a stop a few paces away from the desk. Zane looked longingly at them, but as Azizi pulled out the upgraded remote from her pocket threateningly, he knew better than to speak to them. Instead, he winced, and he hoped that outwardly appearing meek and obedient would appease Azizi and keep her from pressing any of the controls on that awful remote.

His hopes were in vain. Azizi's hand came down on the remote and Zane closed his eyes, bracing for the pain, the emotional pain of being forced to do something against his will or the physical pain of being punished.

None came. Zane opened his eyes, confused. Oh.

He could see nothing. Along that line, he could hear nothing. Azizi had remotely shut off his vision and hearing.

Zane held in a sigh. He had gotten a brief moment of being able to see and hear his family. That would have to tide him over until the end of the appeal, when he would be declared a person and allowed to return to them.

He would be declared a person and allowed to return to them.

He would be.

He had to be.


	6. It's all wrong, it's so right

**AN: Woo-hoo, last chapter! I'm so happy to have been able to share this alternate ending, no matter how painful it is, with all of you. I'm planning on writing a semi-sequel for Ninjago Angst Week, so keep an eye out for that this upcoming week. This chapter's title is from "Come On Get Higher" by Matt Nathanson, which I do not own. Thank you all for reading!**

* * *

The thirteen judges of the Ninjago Supreme Court exited the room to discuss what to decide, and Nya let out a long breath she hadn't realized she had been holding. This was it. She had argued their point as well as she could; it was up to the judges now.

Behind her, Kai and Lloyd were murmuring quietly, about what, Nya couldn't hear. She turned toward them, trying to hear better, but couldn't, so she decided to take stock of the others instead. Cole and Wu were staring at the door through which the judges would return, an interesting mix of dread and hope on both of their faces. Jay...

Jay was staring at Zane.

Nya got up and went to Jay, standing beside his seat. "Hey."

Jay startled, gaze flying to her. He apparently had been so focused on Zane that he hadn't noticed her approaching. "Uh, hey. Hi."

"What are you thinking about?" Nya asked as casually as she could manage.

"That terrible remote control thing Azizi's got," Jay said bitterly. "Can you believe it? Not only does Zane not get to be thought of as a person, but he doesn't even get to choose what he does. The way she bragged to us after she turned Zane's sight and hearing off, the way she talked about being able to control everything about him with just a few pressed buttons, it gets me so, so, so mad. You saw what happened when she pulled the remote out, right?"

Nya nodded sadly. "The way Zane winced."

"Uh-huh," Jay agreed, scowling at the floor. "Were you thinking about the remote control too?"

"No, actually. I was thinking about all the things we're going to do when we get Zane back," Nya stated.

Jay perked up a little at the word "when." "Yeah?"

"Yeah. So, first we're going to do a group hug right then and there, of course. Then we'll get him back to the academy, where we'll get him all fixed up in whatever ways he needs," Nya explained, voice warming up and getting louder as she spoke. "Then we'll have a big party, or a small party, or just a little gathering if that's what Zane wants, with lots of laughter, lots of games, and lots of food, of course."

"That sounds like it's going to be nice," Jay said wistfully.

"It will be nice," Nya asserted. "It will be."

The woman who had announced the judges when they came in the first time entered the room and cleared her throat.

Nya hurried back to her seat, getting there just in time.

"All rise for the honorable Ninjago Supreme Court judges!" The woman proclaimed.

The judges began filing back into the room, taking their seats. They looked stern, each face schooled into the same serious, stony style.

Nya's heart started to sink, but she forced herself to remain positive. It will turn out okay. It will turn out okay. It will.

"You may be seated," the announcer woman told the room.

As the judges and the other occupants of the courtroom alike began taking their seats, Nya saw Azizi pull the remote control from her pocket with a flourish. She coughed pointedly as she faced Azizi, trying to get the attention of Kai, Cole, Lloyd, Jay, and Sensei Wu, and from the shuffling and gasping behind her, Nya succeeded.

"I want the robot to fully experience knowing that it's my property now and forever," Azizi said smugly, looking directly at Nya.

Nya scowled at her, wanting to turn away but instead choosing to watch as Azizi pressed a few buttons and Zane's formerly blank countenance took on life again.

Looking around as Azizi slipped the remote back in her pocket, Zane glanced over at Nya with wide, confused-but-hopeful eyes.

Nya gestured at the judges still settling in and mouthed, "No decision yet."

Zane nodded, sat up straighter, and looked to the front of the room intently.

The woman who had announced the judges left the room, and the chief justice stood from her seat. "As Chief Justice Minos, I have the honor of giving you our ruling. The majority opinion of the court is as follows."

The room seemed to be holding its breath, from Azizi and her security officers to Nya and the ninja.

"The robot known as 'Zane Julien' is a person," Chief Justice Minos stated.

Nya's heart pounded in her ears, overtaking all other sounds and rendering all she saw to a silent scene. She saw the room as if in a hazy feverish dream, snippet after snippet: Chief Justice Minos finishing speaking, Zane sitting oh-so-still with eyes oh-so-wide, the press's cameras clicking and pens scribbling, Azizi standing and shouting at the judges furiously.

The haze seemed to pop, and everything rushed back into focus and full-swing.

"-Is an incredible injustice!" Azizi was shrieking, slamming her hands down on her desk.

Although Azizi was still speaking, still raging, still pounding her fists on her desk, Nya ignored her. Instead of paying the angry woman any mind, Nya stood and walked back to Kai, Lloyd, Jay, Cole, and Sensei Wu. She grinned at them.

They grinned back, clambering to their feet.

"Let's go get Zane back," Nya said a little breathlessly, and she turned and led the way across the courtroom, stopping in front of the desk where Zane sat between two muscular people in security officer uniforms.

Zane, who had been staring into space as if he couldn't believe what was happening (and maybe that was exactly what was happening, he couldn't believe it), blinked and focused on their group as they came to a stop. A tiny, hesitant smile formed on his face.

"Hey," Nya said lightly. "Ready to go home?"

Zane didn't say a word. He just hesitated, putting his hands on the table in a meaningful display that he was handcuffed to the person on either side of him.

"Oh. Okay. Uh, you two need to let him go, right now," Nya commanded the two apparent security officers.

"Won't," one grunted.

"Can't," the other corrected.

"Not able to," the first agreed.

"What do you mean, you're not able to?" Jay asked incredulously, voice cracking on the word "not."

"You'd better be able to, and you'd better hope you're able to real quick," Kai growled menacingly.

"We don't have the key," the second officer said quickly, looking like he wished he was anywhere but there.

"Azizi has the key," the first explained, pointing with the hand that didn't have her handcuffed to Zane at the still-screaming woman.

"Well, let's go talk to Azizi, then," Nya declared, side-stepping over to lead the group to stand in front of Azizi. Nya said brightly to the yelling woman, "Hi there! Remember me?"

Azizi paused in her rant to scowl at Nya. "Of course I remember you."

"Good! Your memory's in working order!" Nya said cheerfully. "That means you also remember the fact that the judges just declared Zane a person not five minutes ago."

"I remember," Azizi said through gritted teeth.

"Then we're going to need you to hand over the key to get him unhandcuffed," Nya said patiently.

"And I would recommend you hand it over pretty soon, because Kai's getting a little antsy, and that doesn't bode well for you," Cole added.

Fumbling around in her pockets with hands shaking from pure rage, Azizi pulled out the remote control, then dropped it because her hands were shaking so much.

Before Azizi could pick it up, Lloyd stepped forward and scooped it up, cradling it carefully so as not to press any buttons. "I think we'll take this off your hands for you."

"No, you will not!" Azizi objected. "You're taking my robot, you can't take my remote control too!"

"Well, you could keep it, and then we could turn you in for possession of a device created for the intent of torture that's already been used on someone multiple times," Nya said sweetly. "Or we could take it and destroy it for you. Your choice."

Azizi's mouth gaped open. She stared at Nya wordlessly for a long moment, breathing heavily.

"Your choice," Sensei Wu prompted her.

"Your choice," Kai repeated smugly, clearly enjoying Azizi being at a loss for words.

"Fine. Keep it. Keep the remote control, keep the robot, keep the keys and the handcuffs for all I care," Azizi said finally, finding the key in her pocket at long last and tossing it to the ground. She smiled cruelly. "I have enough research to keep me going for the rest of my life."

"You do that," Nya said casually, picking up the key and tossing it back and forth between her hands. "Just remember, Zane's a person, which means that you can't publish any papers about him without his consent."

Azizi's jaw dropped again. Apparently she hadn't thought of that.

Smiling widely, Nya turned and led the group a few steps back over to stand in front of Zane, who had been watching their conversation with wide eyes. Quickly, Nya unlocked the handcuffs and grabbed them, passing them and the key over to Cole, who spun around and chucked them halfway across the room, right into a trash can.

"Ready to go home?" Nya asked again.

Zane still didn't speak. He just nodded and stood, walking unsteadily around the desk to join the group. He gave them that same tiny, hesitant smile again as they gathered around him and swarmed him with hugs. It took a good minute, but eventually they had hugged him enough to reassure themselves that he was really there and was coming home with them.

"Off we go then!" Lloyd said cheerfully once the hugs stopped, and he sprinted away from the group, past the spectator's seats where their family, friends, and allies still sat, calling to them as he passed, "We're going! Let's go!"

The rest of their group followed, surrounding Zane and bearing him along as their allies followed them.

Lloyd made it all the way to the huge doors leading out of the courtroom and tugged them open before stopping and waiting for the group, now made of more people as their allies joined them. The large group swept out of the courtroom, down a flight of stairs, through a maze of hallways, into the open air, and then up to the old bus that had transported the initial group to the courthouse. They piled onto the bus, starting to chatter back and forth with relief even as they glanced worriedly at Zane, who still hadn't said a word.

Nya closed the door behind the last stragglers into the bus and started it up, driving down long streets, making her way back to the academy. She participated in the various conversations, but only on the surface level. Most of her attention was focused on driving. Or at least, that's what she told herself she focused her attention on.

The bus parked at the academy and its riders piled out, most of them dispersing into the building on Wu's firm instructions to pull together ingredients for a party in the biggest conference room. Kai, Cole, Jay, Nya, and Lloyd, however, stayed seated in the bus, watching Zane, who stared into the distance out the nearest window and showed no signs of planning on getting up.

"...Zane?" Lloyd said tentatively after a moment.

Zane startled hard. Glancing around wildly, he looked confused at finding himself on a bus surrounded by his friends, but after a moment he gave them a little smile nonetheless.

"Wanna go in?" Cole prompted, standing.

After a moment, Zane stood too. The rest of them stood as well. Slowly, the group made their way off the bus and into the academy, Nya taking the lead. She guided them down the familiar halls and past room after room.

"Wu said we're having the party in that conference room, so why aren't we going straight there?" Kai asked when it became evident they were heading away from the large conference room they had been using as a sort of base of operations..

"I think we should have a little talk before we start partying," Nya stated. She stopped in front of a classroom. "Here will work."

Kai looked mildly confused and also a little put-out.

Nya tilted her head meaningfully toward Zane, who was staring at his own feet.

Getting it, Kai nodded and opened the classroom door, letting everyone in before entering and closing the door behind him. He leaned against the wall, watching as Jay and Lloyd took seats in student desks, Cole leaned against the teacher's desk, Nya leaned against the board, and Zane just stood there, eyes still focused on his feet.

"Well, it took several weeks longer than we expected it to take, but we beat Azizi in court," Nya said casually.

"Go, ninja!" Jay cheered. "And also samurai, and ninja and samurai's family and friends!"

"Go us," Nya agreed. "But it cost us a lot. Specifically, it cost you a lot, Zane."

At the sound of his name, Zane finally looked up from his feet. His eyes darted from face to face, finally settling on Nya.

"It's beyond good to see you again," Nya began.

"Way beyond good," Cole agreed.

"But it's also concerning, given all that you went through. "I know you probably aren't ready to hear this, but we're worried about you," Nya stated carefully. "Are you doing okay?"

Zane thought about that for a moment. Finally, he said softly, "No. I am, I am not fine."

Lloyd drew in a sharp breath.

Kai hissed angrily, obviously taking personal offense to the fact that Azizi had hurt his brother enough that Zane would admit to not being fine.

Nya winced.

"I am not fine," Zane repeated. Then he smiled, a real, full, slightly broken but genuine smile. "But I am home. So, though I am not fine now, I will be."


End file.
